I love a
good joke, and I love a good analogy… so
I have been sharing this one with everyone I have chatted with lately. I will clean it up a bit for the worldwide
web. It’s like the school district has
turned into a restaurant called Crap Café.
All we are allowed to serve is crap.
So when our patrons come in we are left asking would you prefer our crap
soup, crap sandwich, or crap soufflé? There
is really no need to protest about how much a meal of crap sucks. We don’t want to serve these things. If we have kids in the district we really don’t
want them to eat these things… It’s
really hard when you are in the business of nourishing and nurturing and you
suddenly realize that you might make people sick no matter what you give them –
mentally and physically sick. When you
put it that way it's suddenly not so much of a joke now is it…
So what do
we do?
If you can’t
see the mental health toll kids are feeling being isolated from friends and
normalcy – I mean the real lived out toll that is playing out in homes across
the country then consider yourself blessed. I won’t share those stories out of respect for
those who mean the most to me.
If no one you love has lost someone or been lost to the real horrors of Covid-19 then consider yourself blessed. I won’t share those stories because no one deserves to capitalize on them to make a point.
I guess we
could close the restaurant down all together, but there are genuine health
impacts of an economic shutdown, which schools are intricately connected to and if
you are not aware of exactly how those impacts play out then feel blessed that
you have lived untouched by true poverty.
Heck – you must not even visit those circles. I won’t bother you with the horrific details
of that either. It would be hard to
really imagine if you never loved someone who could not afford life-saving medical
care.
I have no
answers. Sorry if you came for that… But I do have some certainties. One is that no matter how you feel about if
schools should open, your opinion is most likely built upon the needs and
interests of someone you love dearly as is everyone else’s (minus a few
opinionated loonies). You are sure that
your preference meets the more important need.
The problem is we disagree adamantly about what that might be right
now. If we can recognize that driving force in
each other’s arguments maybe we could sit back and really find the menu item with
the least amount of crap. Instead of
getting angry at anyone who disagrees with us, we have to be willing to be
really flexible and creative about what school and learning might look
like. We have to be married to almost
nothing except a deep concern for the well-being of children and those who care
for them in and out of schools. We have
to be willing to accept and make changes as we go. We must be gentle, assume positive intent,
and be willing to listen. Just remember,
we aren’t voting for which movie to watch on family movie night, we are
debating choices that inevitably pit different genuine needs against each
other.
And no
matter what, remember that eventually the café will bring back our old
favorites along with new dishes discovered due to the kind of creativity only
born of necessity. I can’t wait until
both working at and eating at the Crap Café is a distant memory.
